{"id":15120,"date":"2012-06-12T08:08:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T06:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=15120"},"modified":"2012-06-12T08:10:29","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T06:10:29","slug":"facebooks-growth-appears-to-be-slowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/15120\/facebooks-growth-appears-to-be-slowing\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook’s growth appears to be slowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook’s<\/a> growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

Unique U.S. visitors to the wildly popular social media site rose 5 percent in April to 158 million, according to data attributed to comScore<\/a>. ComScore confirmed the data.<\/p>\n

That’s the slowest growth rate since comScore started tracking data in 2008.<\/p>\n

Users spent more than six hours a month on the site in April, up 16 percent from the prior year. Still, that’s a slower growth rate than the 23 percent increase in 2011, according to comScore data cited in the report.<\/p>\n

Facebook went public on May 18 in a widely anticipated market debut. But the stock price has slid since then. Facebook’s stock was up about 2 percent to $27.65 on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Investors are concerned about Facebook’s ability to keep increasing revenue and make money from its growing mobile audience. Meanwhile, many analysts hold positive long-term ratings on the stock.<\/p>\n

The company has been rolling out new offerings for mobile users, including apps for taking photos, messaging and for managing business brand pages.<\/p>\n

It is also unveiling an app center to allow users to find Facebook-related games and other applications more easily.<\/p>\n

Facebook Inc., based in Menlo Park, California, has nearly a billion users worldwide.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, comScore will publish a report measuring the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook. The report, previewed on a comScore blog post last week, also looks at other things brands do to promote themselves on Facebook beyond paid advertising. Such “earned media” can include Facebook users sharing a post about the brand.<\/p>\n

Related articles:<\/h3>\n

Facebook IPO a blow to investor confidence<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook launches App Centre<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook advertising effectiveness questioned<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook’s growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[25,205,45],"class_list":["post-15120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-comscore","tag-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15122,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15120\/revisions\/15122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}